Grey Stains on the Perfect Portrait
by Herald Aros
Summary: [oneshot] His life is perfect, and I'm just a stranger looking in.


Disclaimer: Don't own, never will, moving on.

Warnings: Yaoi and het; Sokairiku and Akurokine to be exact. For those of you who don't speak murderized-namespeak, that's Sora/Kairi/Riku (threesome) and Axel/Roxas/Namine (threesome). Also hints of Roxora, but they're just kinda mentioned and not really acted upon. There's suggestions of mature-ish content, but nothing's outright _stated_, let alone _detailed_, so I'm keeping this at T.

Other: This is a twoshot that I'll continue as soon as I get around to writing the second half.

_The Grey Stain_

I wake up, content for some reason. Limbs are tangled, mine and others', and there's something soft on my chest. I sigh, but it's a satisfied, happy sound, and that's how I feel. I've forgotten for a moment that Axel and Naminé can't be here, because he's dead and she's in Kairi like I'm in Sora. Everything is wonderful, perfect like it used to be, and it doesn't matter that my back aches and there's a strange taste in my mouth that has nothing of alcohol in it.

A groan from behind and warm breath on my ear, sleepy mumblings spoken with a voice that isn't quite right and a hand gliding up my side. Strangely, something tickles in my throat, so I open my mouth and let out a laugh, too light and too happy to be _mine_. Naminé nuzzles into my chest, and I wrap my arms around her, smiling as her arms wrap around me as well.

"Mm... Time?" she murmurs, shifting her body against mine in a friendly, comfortable, nonsexual way, and I frown lightly at her also not-right voice. Is she sick?

The body behind me— Axel— shifts as well, hip pressing slightly into my back and leg moving off of mine. " 'S early...almost seven..." he says, slurring in his half-awake state, and again his voice is off.

I groan something about school and parents in reply, and while it doesn't make sense to me, Naminé and Axel seem to accept it.

Axel ruffles my hair as he moves again— sitting up, I think— while Naminé moves again. Blearily, I blink my eyes open, expecting red-green and gold-blue but seeing silver-blue and red-blue instead, and my eyes go wide in shock and a little bit of horror.

Memories flood in and I fall backwards, but just my vision seems to come along, and as my body remains where it was, the view of the bed and Riku and Kairi is swimming in black, long-lost but achingly similar situations floating up out of the void, and I would cry or cry out if I could, but I can't, all I can do is drift away from it...away from the hurt, maybe?

But no, even the dark not-quite-numbness is denied to me, and a bright light shines, forcing me to shield what eyes a spirit has. The light is accompanied by sounds, vocal noises that are words that my brain doesn't— can't?— process. After a period of time, the noises stop, are replaced by hands that grab mine and force them down and sympathetic, guilty eyes that gaze at my blank blue ones.

"Roxas, I'm sorry," he says, as if it were his fault that I'm hurt and lost and lonely, and maybe it is, but I won't ever say so.

I want to ask if the wind is talking, I want to collapse and cry on his shoulder, I want to make him hurt for everything he did and I want to make him scream my name to get even, to pay him back for lying to me last night— and probably many more before that I still don't know about— and for excluding me from his life and his fun and for trying to shield me from the pain and the memories.

I want to do a lot of things, but I don't— can't— do any of them, so I just stand there, hearing Sora without listening, watching curiously as tears fall and his grip tightens, then loosens, and suddenly he's _hugging_ me, arms wrapped around my shoulders in a death-grip and head buried in my neck, liquid leaking down my chest and back, making me shiver slightly (but that goes unnoticed).

He's saying something— chanting, really— and I think I might be annoyed or angry if it was something else— something other than _"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry Roxas, I'm _sorry_!"_— or if he wasn't crying on me, or if he was someone other than _Sora_. As it is, I'm only mildly annoyed that he didn't tell me, and that's already starting to fade.

I pull him off me and shove him away— gently, gently, like a light breeze or a soft shaft of light illuminating a tired, weathered, empty room— pushing him back into his life with his friends-lovers-companions. Back into the light and colors and feelings of his world, because he doesn't belong in this dark, sociopathic refuge of mine.

Because he belongs with his still-alive silver-blue Riku and red-blue Kairi, and I belong with my memories of red-green Axel and gold-blue Naminé, with my hazy recollections of warm nights in cold white rooms, with my thoughts and ideas and dreams that have as much of a right to exist as I do— which is to say, none— that are dusty with disuse and stained grey in places, that are my main link to Sora's bright mind, that shine brightly— despite the dust— in this oppressive lack of light that surrounds me, that I hate and cherish all at once, that I want to be rid of forever and can't bear to lose.

Like Riku, I wasn't afraid of the dark until I was actually _in_ it. Until I was swallowed, losing my grip and drowning in it, I never thought twice about the darkness except to sneer at it in utter disdain. Silly me.

Now I fear the darkness. But I still fear the light more.


End file.
